


eyes all aglow

by jolybird



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Babysitting, Christmas Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:48:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21655522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jolybird/pseuds/jolybird
Summary: Christmas is Neville’s favorite time of year and so what if he goes a little crazy with it? He has a small army of his friend’s children to entertain (and feed sweets until he sends them home on a sugar high).;;written for HP Mini Fest 2016
Relationships: Hannah Abbott/Neville Longbottom
Kudos: 10
Collections: Mini Fest Archive





	eyes all aglow

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for HP Mini Fest 2016 and I honestly completely forgot about it until just a few days ago. This is very loosely based off of one holiday season when I decided that popcorn with every kind of sweet in the house was a perfect thing to feed kids. It went about as well as you'd think it would.

Neville glanced into the dining room where a loud roar of giggles erupted and then went to open the door for his girlfriend. Hannah stood on the steps, lightly dusted in snow, arms laden with shopping bags from both Diagon Alley and muggle shops alike. She took one look at him as he ushered her inside and shut the door against the cold and raised her eyebrows, “Why are you covered in green frosting?”

Someone screamed and Neville nodded towards the sound in lieu of answering before he hurried back into the dining room to discover that somehow Lorcan had stuck his brother’s cookie to the ceiling. Lysander was about to start wailing and so Neville whipped out his wand, pulled the cookie down from the ceiling and made sure Lorcan’s bag of icing squirted him. This made Lysander forget about his ill-fated masterpiece and Neville gave him a new cookie to ice.

“Honey, you know that I love Christmas nearly as much as you--and that in itself is saying a _lot_ \--and the flat looks beautiful but was it really quite necessary to kidnap the Weasley, Potter _and_ Scamander children?”

James, who had frosting not only around his mouth but in his eyebrows and hair as well, looked up, “Mum and Dad are on a date night and Aunt Hermione and Uncle Ron are with Uncle Percy and the baby.”

“Daddy’s at work and Mummy’s visiting Father Christmas to give him our Christmas lists!” Lorcan smiled, his elbows on the table (one in a blob of frosting), chin resting on his hands. His cuteness was a cover for the fact he was often a demon child around people who weren’t his parents, his brother (on a good day) or Hannah (Neville was Tolerated because he was Hannah’s boyfriend).

“Really?” Hannah asked, walking into the danger zone. James’ hands were absolutely covered in frosting, Rose was concentrating on chewing on a cookie in her high chair, and Lysander was eyeing the table for what kind of sprinkles his purple and blue reindeer cookie needed.

Lorcan nodded seriously, “Yes. If you call her very quickly, you might be able to tell her to tell Santa what you want.”

“I already owled my list, of course. But if I would have known your mum was going to the North Pole to see Father Christmas, I would have saved poor Olwen the trip!” Hannah reached for one of the cookies and James screamed.

“No! Your apron!” His hand was out like he was going to throw himself across the table to stop her. Hannah immediately froze because she had actually seen him do that before. It had been Easter and he had broken his arm. It hadn’t been fun.

Hannah looked from the kids, all of whom were wearing matching aprons with hippogriff wearing hats and gloves painted on the front, to Neville who was wearing one with a tree that looked suspiciously like the Whomping Willow at Hogwarts decorated up in tinsel and popcorn.

Neville’s eyes went wide and he ran out of the room to grab Hannah’s apron, “Dean made these for us!”

Hannah’s had pockets that looked like steaming mugs of cocoa and, across the front, a fireplace with stockings was painted. Now that Neville mentioned it, she could tell that Dean had painted them: he had long, sweeping brush strokes and some kind of paint that always seemed to shimmer in the light. She put it on and James lowered his hand, content. She wasn’t going to ask how long he had been planning this if he had custom aprons for them and their friends’ children.

Lorcan handed her a hippogriff cookie and some rainbow sprinkles. “Thanks, dear.” She smiled, and then seemed to realize they were one child short, “Where’s Al?”

“He passed out a half hour ago after eating half the icing while I was making it.”

Hannah narrowed her eyes at him but Neville (and James) just laughed, “he’s a toddler, dear. He really shouldn’t be eating half a batch of icing.”

Neville laughed again and then headed back towards the kitchen, “watch them for a minute, I’ll go get some hot cocoa and reheat some dinner for you.”

“I love you!” Hannah called and then the kids all had to shout it to so they weren’t outdone. Neville smiled to himself as he listened to Lysander tell her all about how they had finished decorating the tree and wrapped some presents (Al took the utmost pleasure in knowing things Harry didn’t, and so he giggled for ten minutes after Neville let him put the tape down on Harry’s present).

As he went into the kitchen, he sent another sticking spell on the garland hung over the doorframe and he pushed one of his snow globes back away from the edge of the bookcase. Busying himself with heating up milk and finding enough mugs, he completely missed the sound of someone walking into the kitchen until there was a tug on his pants. He looked down to see Al blinking blearily up at him. He held his hands up and Neville scooped him into his arms.

“How was your nap?”

Al was wrapped in one of Neville’s Christmas jumpers and so it took him several long moments to free his hands from the long sleeves, but eventually he did and he looked to Neville, “I’m hungry.”

“That’s because you slept through dinner. But Hannah’s home and you can eat dinner with her. Do you want some hot cocoa? I think everyone’s going to be done with cookies soon and we’re all going to go into the other room to drink some cocoa.”

Al nodded and rested his head on Neville’s shoulder. Now one handed, Neville pulled out his wand and pulled out a serving tray and somehow managed to squeeze the mugs on it. He poured the drinks, reheated the two plates of dinner he had previously set aside and then carefully levitated them out in front of him as he went into the living room.

In the dining room, Hannah seemed to understand his plan without him having to say a single thing because she called out, “alright my little house elves, cookies down and come over here so I can clean you all up and we can go have hot cocoa!”

For a moment, Neville thought about going to help her but she was more than capable of casting the cleaning charm a couple of times (although James might be a bit tricky) and Al’s grip was tight around him and he was eyeing his food with an almost ravenous gleam in his eye. Neville placed the food and drinks down onto his coffee table and then sat on the floor. Al immediately made himself comfortable in his lap and then dug into his dinner.

The others all raced into the room a moment later (James was still tinted slightly green in places but by the smile on Hannah’s face it might be a tad intentional). Hannah sat next to him as the children all took their drinks and then claimed a spot (Lysander sat right by the tree as if ready to open presents). It took James all of three seconds to pull out a wizard’s chess board (he loved watching the pieces attack each other and then rebuild themselves) and Lorcan and Rose teamed up to play him.

Neville had to force himself to stop thinking about checklists and the Christmas cards he still had to send and the presents for Hannah’s stocking he still needed to buy. The kids were quiet for now but there would be chaos as soon as Rose tried to chew on one of James’ knights or Lysander spilt his hot cocoa (it was already dripping down the side of his mug).

The room was lit by the light from the Christmas tree and the fairy lights Hannah had strung up on the first of November and this was nice and peaceful. He loved everything about Christmas: the icing on the ceiling and rushing around trying to make sure he didn’t forget anyone’s gifts (he was invited to Christmas at the Burrow so he and Hannah had been working on _that_ list since August), the stealing your friend's kids so you had extra hands to help you ice cookies. He loved the decorations and mistletoe and breaking out his Christmas sweaters (half of which were gifted to him as a joke so he had the added bonus of watching his friends squirm at being seen with him wearing them in public).

“Hey James--” he said, breaking out of his thoughts, “sing that Christmas song Uncle George taught you.”

James’ eyes lit up and Hannah laughed, leaning into him as James began to sing the most inappropriate Christmas carol Neville had ever heard with all of his five year old might.


End file.
